At Harvard, Kagan Aimed Sights Higher

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: May 26, 2010

WASHINGTON -- One Saturday afternoon in March 2003, Lawrence H. Summers invited Elena Kagan for a private chat in the library of Elmwood, the stately clapboard mansion he occupied as the president of Harvard. The two had been close colleagues, if not close friends, as top aides working for President Bill Clinton. But this was no social call.

Mr. Summers, a brilliant but impatient economist with a bull-in-the-china-shop management style, was looking for a new law school dean. Ms. Kagan, a newly tenured professor, was thin on management experience, and her academic writings were relatively scant.

But she was a faculty favorite -- her colleagues viewed her as a leader and consensus builder who held sway with the strong-willed university president. Mr. Summers, aware that she had her sights set even higher, accompanied his job offer with a hint of a warning.

''I would say Elena's colleagues chose her as much as I did,'' he said in a recent interview, adding, ''I said to her: 'Elena, if you accept this job and then you are offered a position like Supreme Court justice or attorney general, I will congratulate you with all my heart and wish you well. But we need you to make a commitment to the law school for a few years before taking any other position.' ''

Now Mr. Summers is President Obama's top economic adviser, and Ms. Kagan is the president's Supreme Court nominee. Her dealings with Mr. Summers -- she persuaded him to abandon an unpopular plan to move the law school, kept her distance when he faltered and made no bones about trying to succeed him when he was forced to resign as Harvard's president -- reveal a woman of intense ambition and deft political skills. Their relationship hints as well at Ms. Kagan's persuasiveness, and how she might operate on a divided Supreme Court, where persuasion often seems in short supply.

''He is not someone you can cajole in any way,'' Martha L. Minow, the current Harvard Law dean, said of Mr. Summers. ''It's the merits, evidence, substance. It's not about charm, it's not about small talk, it's 'Just the facts ma'am,' and build your case and be unbelievably fair-minded about the other case, because he is going to ask you about the other side.''

In the days since Mr. Obama nominated her, much has been made of Ms. Kagan's tenure as dean, and her top-to-bottom transformation of Harvard Law School. Far less attention has been paid to how she climbed from visiting professor to possible successor to Mr. Summers, the result of relentless networking and a remarkable ability to navigate the treacherous waters of Harvard's internal politics.

''She is a strategic and deliberative thinker on all issues -- there was always a sense of 'Let me do my homework,' '' said one colleague, Prof. Charles J. Ogletree Jr. He recalled how, as dean, Ms. Kagan met with every member of the faculty. ''She was willing to work seven days a week, it wasn't just Monday through Friday, 10 to 5, it was whenever people were available -- a baseball game, a student reception, a breakfast, a lunch, a coffee.''

Ms. Kagan had been a close ally of Mr. Summers, but she was noticeably silent when he ran into a public relations buzz saw over his impolitic remarks about women's aptitude for science -- remarks that helped cost him his job. Privately, Ms. Kagan told friends and colleagues that she thought the fracas was overblown. But she also resisted entreaties by allies of Mr. Summers to publicly defend him, according to two people familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity.

One said friends of Mr. Summers viewed her silence as an act of disloyalty, the other said Ms. Kagan simply did not want to drag the law school into the fray. Her style was one of careful balance, said Dennis F. Thompson, a professor of political philosophy.

''She doesn't avoid getting engaged in issues that are controversial,'' he said. ''But she doesn't herself want to be the object of controversy.''

As a Harvard law graduate, Ms. Kagan was no stranger when she arrived in Cambridge, Mass., as a visiting professor in 1999, the year Mr. Summers became Mr. Clinton's Treasury secretary. The job was ''clearly a look-see'' said Carol Steiker, a Harvard law professor and close friend of Ms. Kagan's, with the understanding that she would get tenure if it worked out.

Professor Kagan was an instant hit with students, demanding and energetic, with a self-deprecating wit. She threw herself into the rhythms of faculty life, attending workshops to comment on colleagues' writings, advising the law review board, having frequent dinners with colleagues.

Among the most contentious issues then facing Harvard was how to expand beyond the confines of Cambridge. The university had been buying up property across the Charles River in the Boston neighborhood of Allston. When Mr. Summers's predecessor, Neil L. Rudenstine, suggested that the law school move, the law faculty responded by voting against it, 37 to 1.